Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey

It's educational, kid-oriented and fun, and Tyson us confidently smooth popularizer of science. [17 Mar 2014]

The first hour, provided for preview, is spectacular even when seen without completed special effects.

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is science non-fiction at its most accessible and enjoyable.

The premiere episode nimbly balances information with visual spectacle, forging a middle ground between sci-fi and science fact.

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is certainly trippy and visually dazzling, but it’s also a big-thought-provoking series crammed with scientific and historical fact. Hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, it is a transporting mass of CGI special effects and cartoon sequences, but it has the heft and scope of cable’s most esteemed science series, “Planet Earth” and “Life.”

The new Cosmos starts slowly and reverently enough: deGrasse Tyson, a warm, avuncular presence, standing on the same cliffs Sagan did, talking about the universe, our place in it, and preaching the gospel of the scientific method in a glossy episode, which, scientifically speaking, doesn’t advance much beyond middle school.

Where Sagan’s narrative often approached poetry, Dr. Tyson’s can sound like an overwrought, overamplified planetarium show.... The animation used to present his story resembles low-budget anime and isn’t terribly absorbing. Bruno deserves better. Nit-picking aside, if the new Cosmos doesn’t deliver quite the punch of the original, it’s because this isn’t 1980.